Ok, so a little bit of process is needed though:
do we only _link packages or is it ok to maintain directly in Contrib?

We discussed a situation when Contrib was released - the good approach is
that
maintainers will lost an ownership to packages in Contrib:/version and all
maintenance will be done via sumitreq. So linking is better practice (and you
can build same packages for many other repositories).

Hmm, I agree that links are better practice in certain cases but not
always. And can easily link to Contrib from other projects so no need to
have a home:X:Contrib project and in many cases it only causes overhead
by another needed home project (or at least package which has to be built).

I absolutely agree for the "branched" Contrib repos for released
distributions though. And I also don't argue against using submitreq to
patch packages in Contrib but I don't see a reason why the packages in
Factory:Contrib! need to be linked to some home:X package.
My personal proposal would be to let people choose where they want to
maintain the package.